8.04.2005

white blazer

after straight 72 hours of hospital duty, i'm back home in front of my jurassic computer. my eyes are getting heavier by the minute, but not from lack of sleep for those 3 days. i guess i'm still not used to staying in the hospital that long. it will probably take a long time before my body adjusts to hospital life again after being sedentary for more than a year now. but i have to start somewhere.good thing i was with duke the whole time or else i would have died from boredom at the hospital. it was a small private secondary hospital with a 15-bed capacity, just outside manila. so it's not something i would call toxic duty or toxic hospital. still, it was just the right combination to slowly prepare myself before going back to a big hospital for further training.

in those 3 days, duke and i had, sort of, adopted the way the people there talk. soon enough, they wouldn't be able to recognize that we're strangers to their town. we've met quite a few characters there too. there was a father of a patient, who by the look of his face, was hesitant to believe that we're actually physicians just because we looked young. a little assertion on our part and donning of blazers did the trick. sometimes, i'm led to believe that those white blazers hold a lot more than it actually could... such as wisdom, dignity and some added years.

there was also one grandmother, who brought her grandchild for consult, and after learning that we came from manila, was a little more receptive to what we had to say regarding her grandchild's condition. why did that small info make such a big impact on her is one sad fact of life. that kind of thinking is one reason why nothing is happening to this country.

those were just a few of the people we encountered there. and there would still be more to come. but for now, i'm satisfied with what i got, money wise...though still not enough to get this...maybe after next week's duty, i could.